This weekend was all about making progress on the show quilts. That was my main priority.
For the whole cloth quilt, I want to quilt a picture of our house. And, that starts with a photo.
I printed it out, 8x10 and put it in a plastic sleeve protector. I’m using a fine point sharpie to trace the house onto the plastic.
See the resemblance? Okay, so it’s filling in. There are some places that my photo is not detailed enough to trace and I plan to use other photos that are closer and more detailed to fill in those sections. For example, the front door. I have a great close up of the door and the adirondack chairs on either side and some large tropical foliage, so all I needed was the outlines of door and window to fit my tracings together. All this will be put on the overhead projector, so I can change scales of photos to make them fit, so long as I have registration lines, like the outline of the door and window.
I feel like I”m off to the races. I have the silk and the thread. Next is to take a scrap of that silk and mark it with a blue washout marker and make sure I can wash that marker out. If not, this is going to be more freehand than I wanted because white chalk won’t stand up to it. But, that’s okay, too.
And, I got the ditch work around most of the little points on this quilt done. It is not taking nearly as long as I thought. But, it still has been a significant investment of time over the weekend.
Rob watched me bend a needle while we were talking yesterday and he was surprised. He said “it’s actually bent.” I think he thought bent needle was some kind of euphemism.
The next thing to do is lay it out and find mistakes and fix them. There was a tension issue and that means the invisible thread feels like sandpaper in that area. Easy enough to pull and repair. And, there might be a couple of sections where I got a bit out of the ditch and need to repair. And, I saw a small pleat in the back. But, not too much. I’m pretty happy. And, it wouldn’t be a show quilt if I wasn’t pulling out and repairing, right?
I wonder if any show quilts ever get there without the benefit of a seam ripper?
Other than that, scrubbing the shower should qualify as an olympic event. Dad-gummit, in the south, we fight mold and mildew all the time and there should be some heroism granted for every small victory.
Have a great Monday. Lane
6 comments:
I love the idea of your house as a whole cloth quilt-- what a cool idea!
I don't know about shower-scrubbing as an Olympic event, but I'm pretty sure cat-bathing is a martial art.
Super Bowl Sunday is my day to scrub the shower (it does need it). Thank goodness that is off my bucket listr
Lane, can you explain HOW you fix machine quilting mistakes? I did not know you could do that. After all, if you cut out the "oops" stitching with the seam ripper, the quilting at either end of the cut out place is not secured in any way. Is there some magic to leaving thread tails at either end of the cut out stitching so you can knot off and bury the tails, or do you just requilt over a bit of the old quilting on either side of the repair? I hope my questions make sense. I have heard a few quilters mention ripping out and redoing quilting stitches before, but none of my quilting books mentions the best way to do that. Both of your projects look fantastic, by the way. And you can tell Rob that only superhuman Bionic Quilters like you can bend needles. ;-)
Lane, Have you heard of the "Frixion" pens? They are made by the Pilot gel pens and the magic trick is that the lines will dissappear with heat! If you want the lines to come back, just throw it in the freezer. NO LIE! I found mine at an office supply store and now the quilt stores are starting to carry them. They come in a variety of colors too! Of course you would have to try it out on a scrap piece, but you never now.... Can't wait to see the finished product.
I love your adorable home! I can't wait to see how you are going to quilt this -- I expect it to be fabulous!
All that ditch work will really pay off. It makes a huge difference in how the quilt looks when you've finished.
Your wholecloth is going to be amazing.
Clover makes a white marking pen that washes or irons out, if the blue doesn't work for you (but I may already be too late for unsolicited advice).
xo -E
Post a Comment